I suppose the most astonishing aspect of this dismal year has been the realization of how little a lot of Americans know about their own country, about its history, ideals, and mechanics of self-government. Seriously: There is something grossly out-of-kilter when a fundraising advertisement ends with the words “Thank you, President Trump, for letting us say, ‘merry Christmas’ again” and the insult passes with scarce public remark and is quickly forgotten because it’s buried beneath other lies and insults.
It is time to stop indulging ignorant fantasists, to stop pretending they have something to say, and that it deserves respect. It does not.
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Resolute ignorance — faith — is not a virtue, but an inexhaustible engine of harm. When a Holy Man urges you to accept implausible and downright garish claims on ‘faith,’ and in the service of faith to commit harms against others (Leviticus’ teachings about sexuality, for instance), he summons you to intellectual dishonesty and serves only some combination of his own insecurities and avarice.
Somewhere in America, on this very day, somebody got out of bed and was struck with an insight: “Damn. Why did I never see it? It’s so obvious! I am the incarnation of … SOUPY SALES!!” Should we take that seriously because, you know, neo-Soupy has faith? Of course not. The final word on the subject must be given to Friedrich Nietzsche: “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
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Biological evolution by natural selection is real; it really happened, and it is still happening. Humankind is not a complete, final product that popped-up out of nowhere one day, like a toadstool, but a point on a continuum. We may die out, as have millions of other species, or we may persist for hundreds of millions of years as, say, cockroaches have. Genesis is wrong, and we who have done the hard work of understanding that are tired of you who won’t — and really tired of your relentless subversion of public education. Go away.
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David Barton is not a historian; he is a whore who specializes in servicing ignoramuses. America was founded by Enlightenment thinkers who meant to break the long train of bloodshed and ruin at the hands of the churches; it’s right in the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Y’all should recall, too, the Preamble of the United States Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Founders could not have been plainer: They intended a country of thinking men and women who decide for themselves how their affairs shall be organized. It is a national disgrace that an incandescent theocrat like Roy Moore, a plain enemy of America’s foundational ideals, nearly assumed a seat in the Senate.
All of this nonsense must be confronted where and when it is encountered, and drowned in ridicule and ignominy; after all, it is the morons who don’t know these things who have handed the country over to an authoritarian proto-fascist who thinks our Constitution is a bother. 2018 will be the decisive year; it we won’t fight for our country, we will lose it.